Adobe has some research that highlights how important tablets are becoming for driving web traffic (thanks to Mediapost for a great write up on this.) I’ve said it many times, we are seeing this first and foremost with the traffic both to the OfficeDrop website and engagement with the OfficeDrop iPad app. Some great quotes on how tablets are driving a ton of traffic from the...

People are now spending more time using mobile apps than they spend surfing the web! According to a report by Flurry released yesterday, a serious platform shift is happening in how people interact with data. The report says: …for the first time ever, daily time spent in mobile apps surpasses desktop and mobile web consumption. This stat is even more remarkable if you consider...

Adobe has some research that highlights how important tablets are becoming for driving web traffic (thanks to Mediapost for a great write up on this.) I’ve said it many times, we are seeing this first and foremost with the traffic both to the OfficeDrop website and engagement with the OfficeDrop iPad app.

Some great quotes on how tablets are driving a ton of traffic from the MediaPost article:

“The share of Web site traffic on tablets grew more than 300% in the past year”

Tablet share will reach 10% of all traffic by 2014 (that’s it? I bet it will be more!)

“Within one year of the iPad launch in Q2 2010, tablet visits represented 1% of total Web site visits, reaching 4.3% of total visits one year later, up more than 300%.”

“Tablets generated 4.3% of total Web site visits, compared with smartphones at 6.1%, in Q1 2012″

“Approximately 68% of tablets shipped were iPad devices, yet they generated 83% of the combined visits from iPad and Android tablets through December 2011. For every brand Web site visit made with an Android tablet, 2.3 visits were made with an iPad, according to the study.”

“Apple iPads generate 490% as many Web site visits as Android tablets, although iPad shipments are 210% of Android shipments.”

So, key take aways are that iPad users are more engaged on the web than Android tablets, but still tablets are a huge source of traffic for all sites. Consumers and small businesses are using these devices for a lot, including surfing the web.

However, one place where they are not being used as much – so far – is for buying stuff, “… for transactional visits on retail and travel sites, consumers are between 30% and 60% more likely to purchase using a PC.” I bet that is a UI thing that can be solved with better shopping carts and shopping apps.

People are now spending more time using mobile apps than they spend surfing the web! According to a report by Flurry released yesterday, a serious platform shift is happening in how people interact with data.

The report says:

…for the first time ever, daily time spent in mobile apps surpasses desktop and mobile web consumption. This stat is even more remarkable if you consider that it took less than three years for native mobile apps to achieve this level of usage, driven primarily by the popularity of iOS and Android platforms.

This is pretty big news. Check out the chart from the post:

Time spent using the internet is only growing at 16% year over year, but mobile app usage minutes is growing over 90% year over year. So it looks like mobile has got a lot more legs to grow on!

Flurry also reports that social networking and games account for almost 80% of the time spent on mobile apps. This stat doesn’t surprise me too much, as mobile gaming is really taking off. I am a little surprised about the social networking thing – what are they using, Facebook’s app? Or LinkedIn? Maybe Twitter, actually. I wonder how this fits with Facebooks HTML5 strategy?

This data fits with how OfficeDrop is seeing growth. Our Android app has really taken off and is now a huge percentage of our recent growth, and I’m excited for our other upcoming mobile offerings. I think this survey should help clear up any thoughts on the importance of mobile apps and consumer preferences.

Rob Go, seed investor with NextView Ventures (I wrote about NextView last month), has yet another good post, this time on Product Development – Librarians and Poets. He talks about how product management and development needs bot vision and execution/organization, and contrasts several well known startups, internet companies and founder and talks about how they played to their strengths. Good piece, check it out!

I’ll be speaking at a very cool event next week in Cambridge on the 5th in the evening. The event is called “Customer Development: The Second Decade — with Steve Blank’s co-author Bob Dorf.” Come out and hear some pretty interesting folks talk about startup marketing. The main speaker will be Bob Dorf, and the event is moderated by Simeon Simeonov. Other speakers include:

David Cancel, serial entrepreneur and founder of Compete, Lookery, Ghostery and Performable.

Andy Moss, founder and CEO of ESMZone.

Andy Greenawalt, founder and CEO of Perimeter eSecurity and Continuity.net.

Healy Jones, founder of Startable and VP Marketing at OfficeDrop.

Rob May, founder and CEO of Backupify.

The event is free (sponsored by General Catalyst, a local venture capital firm.) To register for the customer development event click here. The event will start at 6 PM and will be hosted at Microsoft’s NERD Center, One Memorial Drive in Cambridge, MA. Everyone should come!!

The conference is organized by General Catalyst Partners and FastIgnite. Bob Dorf will provide an exclusive peek “under the covers” at some of the many new rules and advancements that Steve Blank, Bob and the ecosystem of thousands of entrepreneur, marketer and investor practitioners have developed over the past several years. The event will feature a keynote by Bob, guest appearances by entrepreneurs and executives who have successfully applied customer development in their businesses and a discussion led by General Catalyst Executive in Residence and FastIgnite CEO Simeon Simeonov.

24% of cell phone sales in Q3 2009 were smartphones; Nielson expects this to jump to 40% in Q4.

In 2011 50% of all phone sales will be smartphones

In 2011 120 million mobile users will be on the internet, and 90 million will be watching video on their phone.

It is clear that we are finally reaching that critical tipping point in terms of mobile internet usage. (I guess we were already there, but now even a slow person like me can see it clearly.) But I believe that phones ARE the internet/computer for many people these days, and that there continues to be opportunity developing services, apps and sites specifically designed for these users. The evidence I’ve seen recently speaks to this point; in particular several of the Techstars mobile companies have really had amazing adoption.

Is Droid, for that matter any of these other new smartphones, going to really take on the iPhone and emerge as a real alternative smartphone platform? I understand that iPhone has a real lead in apps, but I don’t think the market is won yet (although I am a pretty happy iPhone user.) Blackberry shouldn’t be forgotten about either, since their market share is surprisingly large and I think grew to 19% of smartphones recently due to their new phones positive receptions. My gut is that at least BB and iPhone are going to continue to gain share real market share. I have no idea how Droid will do, but if it got 10+% market share over the next year or so I wouldn’t be shocked. And I think it might be good for the overall market if 3 competing smartphone platforms all had real volume.